At sunset from the garden

Today I only recorded a short video, because I do not want my videos to start to get boring and repetitive!

As I said already, I do not really like to film myself and to take pictures. I do not have the adapted electronic material to (out of choice), and it is really not my passion to! I am doing it to answer to those who doubted of my fairness, to those who refused and still refuse to listen to me. 

They looked at me with disdain, considering that I come from a place they didn't know much about, or if they knew things about it, their knowledge was filled with prejudices.

They thought that I was an interested person, and that my interest for the Princess perhaps stemmed from a material need. They couldn't be farther from the truth.

A widespread trait in the nation where I live is generosity. The people of this land might be disorganized, but they are generous. When foreigners visit, they are almost always very warmly welcomed, much more warmly respect to what those who have prejudices against me are used to. When foreigners visit an old, historical town here, there will be inhabitants who out of the blue will propose to the visitors to have a cup of coffee, a lemonade, a syrup, or a town's tour. Not out of interest, they do it for free, but simply out of kindness. There are hundreds, thousands of small villages in the mountains that each has a historical church or several, the ruins of a castle, and it is sometimes the inhabitants themselves who will run to open the church and guide the visitors. There are so many historical places that they cannot all be on the touristic roadmap. The main historical places have a "guichet" and an entrance fee, but there are hundreds of historical places that can just be discovered by the curious wanderer.

Ernest Renan, French writer and archeologist who also spoke many languages including ancient languages, came to inhabit my hometown in the 1800s (in 1860 if I remember correctly) during several months, and he slept in the house that belonged to my forefathers, and that still exists nowadays, and that is regularly visited by the tourists who have some literary culture. Renan wrote several books about his stay here, and he was greatly impressed by the amount of historical vestiges he found. If you doubt about what I say, you can write the name of my hometown and that of Renan, and you will find over the internet a proof of what I say, and even a public association between the name of my family (my last name) and the name of this well-known French writer. Renan wrote "La petite vie de Jésus" during his stay here, which was a very provocative book, as Renan was an atheist, and France at the time was still deeply Christian. The funny thing is that my hometown is still profoundly Christian, but people are also tolerant, so they warmly welcomed Renan, despite the fact that his ideas were different. Renan also wrote many books called "Mission en Phénicie" 

When five, six years ago, I was considered with disdain by the entourage of the Princess, these persons entirely ignored that the roots of Mount Lebanon go directly to Phoenicia, and that the people here have a very unique culture that does not resemble that of the lands around.

Mount Lebanon has always been a safe haven for those who thought differently, across the centuries, and this is why nowadays there is so much diversity. 

I am passionate about history, as my first aim was to write historical novels, before being introduced to fantasy by the Princess. I read dozens of history books and travelers books about the lands where I live, and the surrounding lands too. 

Mount Lebanon has always been like a Castle. The Mountains protected people, protected their freedom of belief, their freedom of speech. This has always been the case. When mountains rise to 3100 meters, when each village is separated from the other by deep valleys, freedom reigns. This is why, contrarily to what the people who judged me unfairly thought, the land where I come from has a lot of culture, and there are people from all social classes who have a lot of culture and wisdom to offer. You can go to the mountain and encounter very simple persons who are very knowledgeable about life, and who are impressively wise, respect to the inhabitants of a bustling town.

There is a say here that states: "a prince of olives and cheese", in the sense that someone can be poor and yet live a decent life of freedom. It's enough to have a small piece of land, some olive trees, some goats.

In my videos, you probably frequently hear the roosters and the hens of our neighbors. Here, a lot of people like to produce their own eggs themselves, as well as their cheese, their alcohol, etc.

And people here often live to very old ages. And old people are allowed to continue to play a role in society, as long as they wish to. My brother has a ninety-two years old teacher at university. My own grandfather worked till seventy-five, and is still now somehow active at eighty-six. 

This is something that in many countries is not allowed. And yet, older people have a lot to offer. I had the luck to meet all my grandparents, but also one great grandfather from whom I learnt a lot, and three great grandmothers. The fact of continuing to be active helps people to live longer. My three great grandmothers all passed the age of 90.

Those people who judged me, used, and pronounced, the name of the place I come from as something insulting. As if the sole fact that I came from this land was enough to explain everything else, and why I was such a bad person. 

They perhaps ignored that the first alphabet was invented in Phoenicia, in Byblos, Sidon and Tyr, that are three towns of my country. The Greek and Latin alphabets everyone now uses are derived from the Phoenician alphabet. Without the Phoenicians, we would perhaps still write in glyphs. Phoenicians democratized writing, they made it available to everyone, as they replaced the 4000 glyphs by 22 letters (the Romans added 4 more letters). 

Byblos, that is at five kilometers from where I live, is a historical and touristic ancient town by the sea. The words Byblos, and Bible, have the same Greek origin. 

The people who so harshly and unfairly judged me also forgot I also am a proud Italian citizen, in addition to my other origins. And at the end I consider myself a citizen of the world, beyond those artificial border lines. I consider that people from each country in the world (and even the people who have no country at all) deserve compassion, peace, respect. 

I believe, from what the Princess writes, and from what my own intuition tells me, that those people are reading me, and even watching my videos. And for them, it is very difficult to recognize their mistake. They should know however that I want nothing else than their respect and their friendship. The past is the past, or rather the past will become the past, the moment those people become ready to speak to me around a table, in a friendly way, with a friendly attitude, in the presence of the Princess, with the actors the Princess wishes to see sitting around the table. 

I wrote them an email today, to those people who read me privately, and publicly, called "A romantic". 

I am a romantic, and I believe in true love, and this is why it is so hard for them to understand me. I do not fit within their traditional scheme. For them, everything obeys to a rational, material logic.

Love does not obey to any rational logic. 

I am a writer, a poet, a dreamer, an idealist, and I value the heart and the soul much more than I value matter. This is a wisdom that I partly learnt from my entourage, that I partly learnt from nature, that I partly learnt from the books and the novels I read, and that I partly carry within me since when I was born.

Some of my oldest childhood memories is this knowledge I had my twin soul, somewhere. I believed in her. When I went to Church, I prayed God to allow me to find her. 

It is a very old conviction I have. There is a very old and beautiful Cathedral in Byblos, called the Saint John-Marc Cathedral. Every New Year, we went to attend a mass into that church that is built with old pillars of stone, and I remember asking from God, from the Virgin Mary, to make me encounter the girl of my dream. I was very young, and yet I had conscience of her existence already, and I knew there was something holy in our bond. 

Do not expect all the people of my country to be like me. I described some general traits they have, such as generosity, openness toward foreigners, etc. But I am also a unique person. Many of the traits of character I have are just mine. They do not come from a country, or a land, but rather from my own imagination. My twin soul, Annelies Broeders, also known by the literary pseudonyms of The Princess of Ylliriel, and Maeve-Nimue, once wrote me: "I am so glad that in Lausanne I could meet a Wording Wizard with a personality so intense he could not be made up or written by anybody but himself."

And that, coming from her, is a great compliment. 

To me, Annelies Broeders is and will always be, the Faerie Princess. This is how I call her, and always called her. The Faerie Princess. 

***

Faerie Princess, I need your help with this, please. I trust that you can do it. I trust thou. You need to stand up for what is right. You need to make your voice heard. You need to show your face.